{"id":5968,"date":"2011-09-30T14:32:38","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T18:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=5968"},"modified":"2011-09-30T14:32:38","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T18:32:38","slug":"the-black-footed-ferrets-storied-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2011\/09\/30\/the-black-footed-ferrets-storied-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"The black-footed ferret\u2019s storied recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post contributed by Terence Houston, ESA Science Policy Analyst<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This week, the National Zoo\u2019s Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute<\/a> (SCBI) sent 26 black-footed ferrets into \u201cboot camp\u201d in Colorado to prepare the animals for life outside captivity.<\/p>\n

A recent Associated Press article<\/a> indicates that the ferrets will spend at least 30 days in the National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in Colorado for \u201cpreconditioning\u201d for the wild. The training involves exposing the ferrets to underground burrows and prairie dog tunnels (prairie dogs make up 91 percent of the ferrets\u2019 food source). \u00a0Scientists say that training gives the ferrets a 10 times better chance of survival in the wild.<\/p>\n

Black-footed ferrets are among the success stories of the Endangered Species Act. The animals were nearly driven to extinction due to fur trade harvest, habitat loss, prairie dog extermination and Sylvatic plague, a disease humans arriving in North America in the late 1800s brought with them. For the ferrets, the disease is the equivalent of the Black plague. These combined factors led to as few as 18 ferrets that remained in the wild in by 1985.<\/p>\n

Several state zoos joined forces with the SCBI and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to breed the endangered animals in captivity. FWS developed its Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Plan<\/a>, which focused on both natural and assisted breeding programs and the establishment of multiple reintroduction sites.<\/p>\n

Since 1991, over 7,000 captive-bred ferrets have been released into prairie dog colonies. Today, there are an estimated 1,000 black-footed ferrets in the wild, with 19 reintroduction sites across North America and four self-sustaining populations in the states of Arizona, South Dakota and Wyoming.<\/p>\n

Additional information on the black-footed ferret\u2019s recovery can be found here<\/a> or by visiting the FWS website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Photo credit: FWS<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post contributed by Terence Houston, ESA Science Policy Analyst This week, the National Zoo\u2019s Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) sent 26 black-footed ferrets into \u201cboot camp\u201d in Colorado to prepare the animals for life outside captivity. A recent Associated Press article indicates that the ferrets will spend at least 30 days in the National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[1291,63,136,1292,703,1143,1195],"class_list":["post-5968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservation","category-ecology-in-policy","tag-black-footed-ferret","tag-endangered-species","tag-endangered-species-act","tag-ferret","tag-fws","tag-prairie-dog","tag-u-s-fish-and-wildlife-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}